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Our services for educators include:

Educator-training workshops. Our dynamic sessions, held throughout the United States and abroad, teach classroom teachers, park rangers, 4-H and Scout leaders, and other educators how to to use their own homegrounds as a context for learning. The curriculum integrates outdoor observation, investigation, and poetry writing with core subjects like English, math, science, social studies, and the arts. Workshop info.

The Watershed Explorer Educator’s Guide. Incorporates language skills, art, science, history, and culture into activities and exercises for kindergarten through high-school students. Order it now.

Free poetry writing guide. This full-color, 75-page guide helps students get beyond impediments to creativity and expression. Developed by Louisiana teachers Connie McDonald and Harriet Maher, in conjunction with River of Words and Milkweed Editions. Download it now.

Free curriculum guide, Teaching the Poetry of Rivers, developed by the Colorado Center for the Book, Colorado Foundation for Water Education, and the Colorado Endowment for the Humanities. Download it now. Integrates poetry, water resource science and the humanities.

Every block tells a story—of plants and animals, history and culture, soil and water. One Square Block™ invites students to explore a single square block in their community—their own neighborhood, a local park, the schoolyard—and create poetry, art, and reports about what they find there.

Younger students may create field guides to plants, trees, and animals on their block; they’ll learn where their water comes from, where the rain runoff goes, and who lived there a long time ago. Older students may investigate land use, transportation, zoning, and other specifics; they conduct oral histories and learn to identify architectural details, weather patterns, and geographic information systems (GIS) coordinates. Each block project will post a detail-rich, standardized “block print” online and compare its block with other blocks from around the world.

We have developed and piloted about ten activities for One Square Block with great success. We are currently working with both Saint Mary's faculty and community partners to expand our offerings, which will eventually include a full K-12 range of exciting and interactive place-based classroom and field activities.

Educational institutions and nonprofits may rent high-quality laminated color reproductions of art from our collection. They are lightweight, easy to display, and inexpensive to ship. We charge a negotiable, nominal rental fee. Contact The Center for Enviromental Literacy at 925-631-4289 or pm7@stmarys-ca.edu for more details.

Museums, galleries, and other venues that can guarantee round-the-clock security may rent original art. Fees are negotiable.

We also offer special themed exhibits, including:

Birds! Birds! Birds! from River of Words

In Praise of Water: Images and Poetry from the River of Words Collection

In addition to serving educators, we also lead workshops for students in kindergarten through 12th grade. All of our workshops provide ideas and models for integrating nature exploration and the arts into core subject areas, including science, math, social studies, and language arts.

Educator workshops: We offer two-day, one-day, or half-day workshops as well as shorter introductory presentations. The cost is $1,000 per day plus travel expenses. Workshops may be held at your site or at Saint Mary's College in Moraga, California

Student workshops: Our workshops can be tailored to fit into a single classroom period, several periods, a full day (for older students), or a semester. They may be held in your classroom or in an off-campus site, or outdoors.

Topics include journal making; anxiety-free poetry writing; "sightless" drawing; kite flying (to learn about flight, weather, and atmosphere); and information about the local watershed and bioregion. Students also learn how to hone their observation skills; educators learn about classroom resources, new ways to engage hard-to-reach learners, and other invaluable tips.

Presentations: In addition to our workshops, we offer introductory presentations about River of Words.

To schedule a workshop or a presentation, please contact the Center at 925-631-4289 or email Director, Pamela Michael at pm7@stmarys-ca.edu

Our free, annual, international youth poetry and art contest — the largest in the world — inspires children ages 5 to 19 to translate their observations into creative expression. Other River of Words successes include training workshops, traveling exhibits, community partnerships, creek clean-ups and restorations, and two Girl Scouts patches — the Watershed and Waterdrop, developed in conjunction with U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

The Center for Environmental Literacy and its premier program, River of Words, could not work effectively without help and inspiration from other institutions, businesses and organizations.

Among our many collaborators are:

The Center for Environmental Literacy's newest partnership is with Saint Mary's MFA Program in Creative Writing. MFA grad students are working with us to process and evaluate the thousands of entries to our Youth Poetry and Art contest, publish the annual anthology, and plan the annual ROW Ceremonies.

Children's Discovery Museum of San Jose, which features an exhibit of our winning and finalist artwork each year! Children's Discovery Museum of San Jose also hosts art and nature journaling workshops with River of Words co-found and the Director of the Center for Enviornmental Literacy, Pamela Michael, and River of Words art judge and renowned nature journaling expert, John Muir Laws

Pamela is the co-founder (with Robert Hass) of River of Words. A writer, radio producer and host, and the former director of the United Nations Task Force on Media and Education, she has also worked for Save the Children (Egypt), the United States Coalition for Education for All, and many other development and educational organizations. She worked for the Discovery Channel’s Educational Division as a curriculum development consultant and was director of marketing and public relations for the San Jose Symphony. Pamela is the author of several books, including The Gift of Rivers; The Whole World is Watching: An International Inquiry into Media Involvement in Education, and many magazine, journal, and newspaper articles. Her anthologies of children's art and poetry are used in classrooms around the world. She has taught writing to aspiring and professional writers, as well as teachers, for over twenty years.

Margie Simone was born in Fresno, California. She was raised on a fig and almond farm. She is currently a junior at Saint Mary's College. She is interested in a Health Science major and is also involded in the Dante Club. Margie also strongly believes in the SLOW food and social justice movements.

River of Words Advisory Council

Robert Hass, co-chair

River of Words judge, advisor, and co-founder, and former U.S. Poet Laureate, Bob is the author of several books of poems, including Field Guide (1973), Praise (1979), Human Wishes (1989), and Sun Under Wood: New Poems (1996); and a collection of essays, Twentieth Century Pleasures: Prose on Poetry (1984). His poetry collection Time and Materials (2007) won the National Book Award for poetry and the 2008 Pulitzer Prize for poetry. His awards include the Yale Younger Poets Award, the William Carlos Williams Award, the National Book Critics’ Circle Award for criticism in 1984, an Award of Merit from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and a John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Fellowship. A professor of English at the University of California at Berkeley since 1989, Bob served from 1995 to 1997 as Poet Laureate of the United States and as consultant in poetry to the Library of Congress. He is a graduate of Saint Mary's College.

Christopher Sindt

Christopher Sindt is Vice Provost for Graducate and Professional Programs at Saint Mary's and was director of the College’s Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing program for seven years. Sindt has a doctorate in English and a master's degree in creative writing from UC Davis. His book The Bodies was published by Parlor Press in 2011 and his poetry chapbook, The Land of Give and Take, was published in 2002 and his poetry has recently appeared in nocturnes, Pool, Swerve and Xantippe.

Dr. Raina J. León

Dr. Raina J. León, Cave Canem graduate fellow (2006) and member of the Carolina African American Writers Collective, has received several prestigious poetry awards and is the author of the forthcoming 2013 book of poetry, Boogeyman Dawn, which was also a finalist for the Naomi Long Madgett Prize (2010). Her first collection of poetry, Canticle of Idols, was a finalist for both the Cave Canem First Book Poetry Prize (2005) and the Andrés Montoya Poetry Prize (2006) and is now available through Wordtech Communications. She headed the High School Literacy Project at the University of North Carolina where she recently received her doctorate in education and is currently an assistant professor of education in the Kalmanovitz School of Education at St. Mary's College of California. She came to Saint Mary’s from the Department of Defense Education Activity, where for three years she taught military dependents in Bamberg, Germany. Raina received her BA in Journalism from Pennsylvania State University, MA in Teaching of English from Teachers College Columbia University and PhD in Education under the Culture, Curriculum and Change strand at the University of North Carolina – Chapel Hill. Her research interests include high school engagement and the teaching of poetry, critical literacy in the high school classroom, facilitating freshmen transitions and educational technology usage among high school educators. She also is a founding editor of The Acentos Review, an online quarterly, international journal devoted to the promotion and publication of Latino and Latina arts.

David Wood

David Wood has worked for more than 25 years as an English teacher at Northgate High School in Walnut Creek, currently serving as department chair. He received a distinguished teacher award from Whitman College in Walla Walla, Washington, in 2002. He was a member of the board of the Aurora Theatre in Berkeley from 1998 to 2007 and served as board president from 1999 to 2001. He received an undergraduate degree from Yale University and a master of arts in teaching (MAT) in English education from the University of Chicago. Mr. Wood is also a director of the Wood Foundation of Chambersburg, PA.

John Muir Laws

River of Words art judge,Naturalist, educator and artist John (Jack) Muir Laws delights in exploring the natural world and sharing this love with others. Laws has worked as an environmental educator since 1984 in California, Wyoming, and Alaska. He teaches classes on natural history, conservation biology, scientific illustration, and field sketching. He is trained as a wildlife biologist and is an associate of the California Academy of Sciences. In 2009, he received the Terwilliger Environmental Award for outstanding service in Environmental Education. He is a 2010 TogetherGreen Conservation Leadership Fellow with the National Audubon Society. He was the 2011 artist for International Migratory Bird Day. Laws has written and illustrated books about art and natural history including The Laws Guide to Drawing Birds (2012), Sierra Birds: a Hiker's Guide (2004), The Laws Guide to the Sierra Nevada (2007), and The Laws Pocket Guide Set to the San Francisco Bay Area (2009). He is a regular contributor to Bay Nature magazine with his "Naturalists Notebook" column. His illustrations are informed by extensive field experience and capture the feeling of the living plant or animal, while also including details critical for identification. Laws is deeply committed to stewardship of nature and collaborates with organizations throughout the state. He is the founder and host of the Bay Area Nature Journal Club. A free, family friendly, intergenerational community who connect with nature through art and field journaling. He is the primary author and editor of the California Native Plant Society Curriculum: Opening the world through Nature Journaling. This standards based, curriculum is kid tested and teacher approved and integrates science, language arts, and visual arts through teaching students to keep a nature journal. He initiated Following Muir's Footsteps, an educational program to engender passionate love of nature, personal understanding of natural history and commitment to stewardship. This program gets students out in the field, learning from their own observations and using field guides and nature journals as the basis for discovering nature around them. As a part of this project, he is working secure funding to donate sets of field guides to every middle and high school in the Sierra Nevada.

Leonore Wilson

Leonore Wilson has long taught English and creative writing at various colleges and universities in the San Francisco Bay Area. Her new book of poetry is Western Solstice (Hiraeth Press). Her poetry, stories and essays have been featured in such magazines as Quarterly West, Madison Review, Laurel Review, Pif, and Third Coast. She has won fellowships to the University of Utah and Villa Montalvo Center of the Arts. Her work has been nominated for four Pushcart awards. Leonore lives on her historic family cattle ranch in the east hills of the Napa Valley. She is the mother of three grown sons.

Stanley Young

In addition to serving as the climate change information officer for the California Air Resources Board, Mr. Young is an author and journalist who has written books and articles on environmental subjects. As communications director of the California Resources Agency, the umbrella state agency for natural resources and environmental management, he oversaw the internal and external communications of 28 departments, boards, commissions, and conservancies and managed a budget of $5 billion and a staff of more than 14,000. Later, as director of marketing for Jones & Stokes, he oversaw communications and branding for this environmental consulting firm of 500 professionals with offices in seven states. He is currently the climate change information officer for the California Air Resources Board. A Commonwealth Scholar who attended universities in Canada, Israel, and England, Stanley has also worked as a modern dancer, yoga teacher, and chef, and was a field officer in a Cambodian refugee camp.

Patty Murray

For the past 25 years Patty has been an arts administrator, both professional and volunteer. She wore many hats with the New Pickle Circus in San Francisco, managed a Concert Series at Lafayette Orinda Presbyterian Church, and was Concert Manager of WomenSing, a Bay Area choral group. Retired from that work professionally, she still shares her expertise with WomenSing. She is a dedicated choral singer!

On a fortuitous visit to River of Words’ Young at Art Gallery in Berkeley in 2003 Patty met ROW co-founder, Pamela Michael. WomenSing had just established a New Music Fund and the poetry and art at the gallery made a deep impression. With the enthusiastic involvement of WomenSing’s Artistic Director a partnership was developed with ROW called Youth inspiring Youth: Commissioning Emerging Composers. Using the inspired poetry of the children of the world from the River of Words collection, Youth Inspiring Youth holds a competition for young (under 25) composers annually and has premiered ten pieces for treble chorus, some of which include a children’s chorus, since the project began. The Library of Congress Center for the Book, a long-time affiliate of River of Words, sponsored a concert for WomenSing in Washington DC in 2011.

Patty is an involved grandmother to seven, a singer, an adventurous and frequent traveler to Nepal and Tibet, and a garden builder. Way back in the middle of the last century, she graduated from UC Berkeley with a degree in Rhetoric, followed by a stint at Stanford’s Summer Institute for Radio and Television Production.

Note: Due to rising costs and concerns about the environmental impact of air travel, River of Words grand prize winners will no longer be flown to the spring award ceremony in California. We will still have a grand ceremony and will honor those winners and finalists who either live nearby or are able to make the trip at their own expense. Winning art and poetry will still be published in our annual anthology and on our website.

Take a look at our 2014 contest winners' work!

Grand Prize winners and our Teacher of the Year were be honored at the 2014 Youth Creativity Awards on June 15 at Saint Mary’s College in Moraga, California (just outside San Francisco). Our annual anthology will be available in early May. Prints of the artwork will be available in mid-April.

We received entries from 35 States and the District of Columbia, as well as from 17 other countries: Afghanistan, Austria, Bangladesh, Belgium, Canada, Cayman Islands, China, India, Indonesia, Korea, Malaysia, Mexico, Pakistan, Philippines, Serbia, Sri Lanka, United Kingdom. This year, owls and deer seemed to be the theme of many submissions, particularly the art entries. As usual, it was painful and difficult for the judges to make their selections.

Promoting Environmental Literacy through the Arts and Cultural Exchange

River of Words® (ROW) is a program of The Center for Environmental Literacy and a part of the Kalmanovitz School of Education. Acknowledged pioneers in the field of place-based education, River of Words has been inspiring educators and their students for over seventeen years with an innovative blend of science and the arts.

River of Words is its own watershed: a linked network of people throughout the United States and the world who are committed to teaching the art and poetry of place to young people. Since 1995, River of Words has encouraged young people to explore and savor the watersheds where they live and trained educators to guide them with inspiration and passion. Through professional development and other educational services, traveling exhibits, publications and community programs, ROW reaches thousands of educators and young people around the world.

ROW was co-founded in 1995 by writer and activist Pamela Michael and then-US Poet Laureate (and SMC alumnus) Robert Hass. One of the program’s most noteworthy events, conducted in affiliation with The Library of Congress Center for the Book, is a free, annual international poetry and art contest for children in kindergarten through twelfth grade. ROW has donated their collection of children’s art—the largest in the world—to Saint Mary’s Hearst Art Gallery, which will exhibit the work and make it available for scholarly research. There are many opportunities available for SMC faculty to collaborate with this innovative and dynamic program through the Center for Environmental Literacy. For more information please contact Pamela Michael, River of Words co-founder and director of Saint Mary's Center for Environmental Literacy, at pm7@stmarys-ca.edu or 925-631-4289.